


solitary confinement.

by sam_roulette



Series: raising emerald cities with voice alone. [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Fugue, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, The Corruption Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_roulette/pseuds/sam_roulette
Summary: "He wakes up and every time, the wasp whispers, we could be a family, you and I. He checks to be sure that he’s still securely tied to the bed and he forces himself through another dream instead."Tim Stoker refuses to feed God.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Series: raising emerald cities with voice alone. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2068116
Kudos: 22





	solitary confinement.

At first he’s sleeping very little; just enough to barely function the next day, after pouring as much sugar as will satiate the growing buzz at the back of his throat into coffee and after a good amount of time staring at the filing cabinets, counting the drawers. The number never changes. His thoughts stay still long enough that Tim feels comfortable opening the handcuffs and rubbing circulation back into his wrist. He’s usually too tired to drift.

Then the wasp in his throat realizes and, on a morning where he’s still half-asleep in the middle of getting the handcuffs off, pours enough venom into his blood to make him float away. 

(The next thing he knows, he’s standing near the end of one hallway of disordered documents, giving himself papercuts as he gently pages through the reams. Martin is staring at his blood as though it’s ambrosia, as though he’s a word away from allowing himself closer to mouth at the seams where skin has delicately split open and white pearls are pushed up from underneath. Tim locks himself in document storage the rest of the day and slides a note under Jon’s office door telling about the eggs on the statement.)

At first he’s sleeping a lot more, keeping the lights off in the windowless backroom so that when he wakes he has no sense of the time. He doesn’t check his phone, because the bright light attracts the wasp in his throat and makes it curious of the source. He doesn’t read the statements either, because anything to do with the Eye makes him itch in a way that feels like a warning. 

He buries himself in the blankets whenever he wakes up and goes back to sleep, trying to kick away dreams and keep his thoughts wholly blackened; shut down, no room to think, feel, or sing. 

It’s cold in document storage even with the blankets. He tells himself it’s enough.

(The next time he wakes he’s been singing in the breakroom, having Basira’s unwavering eye contact from where she previously had her head buried in a record she’d come from the precinct to get. He doesn’t know why he knows this. The wasp might have told him in his sleep. When he stops singing, she’s still staring, but it’s not a blank glance of interest anymore. Not when the terrible realization sets in.)

So he doesn’t deny himself dreams anymore. If he dreams he isn’t singing. 

So it goes like this.

He’s holding someone he knows in his arms. Sometimes it’s Martin, and sometimes it’s someone he doesn’t know, and sometimes it’s Jon. He holds them close to his chest in the early dredges of the night when no daylight stains the sky and when the soft neon of buzzing nightlife cozies itself against the window’s glas. Martin’s breath is warm against his skin where he curls, tucked in and safe and shivering from a confession.

“I really don’t deserve this,” Jon says, and his thin lips are rough against the skin of his collarbone, and Tim aches down to his bones.

“You deserve everything,” Tim promises, because S̨̕̕̕͡a̷̕͘s̛̛҉h͠͏a͏҉̴ does and because she’s here now, being so close and vulnerable that it makes everything fit together the way it should. 

Jon presses his scarred face closer and Tim wants to trace along the freckles that dot their way to his reddened curls, cropped and soft under his fingers. She’s so lovely, finally taken from the walls that usually guard her and even when hiding her face away, showing him that he’s worthy of even that amount of trust. 

Tim doesn’t push him to say anything more- Jon’s always been so, so shy and worried, always worrying over tea and his own failings. Martin’s been so cruel to him lately. (It’s Tim’s fault. Tim is trying to make up for it. It helps that he’s stopped talking.) 

So it continues like this. And Martin weeps softly in his arms as Tim smooths a hand down the protruding vertebrae of his back and whispers apologies against his skin as though Tim can lift their sins from her back and cradle them himself. Tim does carry his sins, and he carries Jon’s despite how they burn because even Jon deserves this softness that Tim knows. Deserves to be the gentle weight in his arms that can be gently rocked and brought to shore, to be loved in all the ways Tim desperately wanted to love.

So he takes them in his arms and he sings them a lullaby, and he makes sure that they’re warm and comfortable. He reminds them of the family that doesn’t love want remember them, but never on purpose; only touching on the implication because he’s despairing over the fact that anyone would be foolish enough to not love them. 

He wants to take them all home and keep them safe. But he loves them.

So he sings, and sings, and sings them to sleep. Their breath becomes one as they settle safely in his arms, rocked on the rolling tide of that which adores them so and which wants so desperately to forget these horrible times where this kind of touch burned. They allow themselves, finally, finally to be cared for. To be loved.

**And then his children eat them from the inside out.**

He wakes up and every time, the wasp whispers,  _ we could be a family, you and I.  _ And it takes all of Tim’s willpower not to tear out his own throat. He checks to be sure that he’s once again securely handcuffed to the bed before he forces himself through another dream, and that’s how it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> The emerald cockroach wasp or jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a solitary wasp of the family Ampulicidae. It is known for its unusual


End file.
